Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Keel Backbone - 9 Hours

The first two sheets of 9mm plywood are cutup into boat parts. In particular the backbone, backbone doubler, and keel sides as named on the plans. Transferring a scaled picture(1:10) of a part to plywood at full scale, I believe this is called lofting, is a little tricky the first time through. For every piece I would expect a station, a point along the x axis, and an elevation, a point along the y axis, to describe a part. With the keel curved profile there doesn’t seem to be enough information to draw the curve or more likely I can’t glean it from the plans.  Now the curve on the bottom of the keel may not seem critical but the parts layout on sheet 2 of the plywood leaves very little room for error. Sheet has four keel sides and two forward backbone doubles crammed on it.

Lessons for the Day:
1.  I think that with all the fiddling with these curved "best fit" parts, it probably would have been better to cut out a template on some scrap 1/8” plywood to make sure of fit before advancing to the expensive plywood.

2.  I can cut a much more accurate line using my 5-1/2” Roybi circular saw than my Roybi Jig Saw. I think I’m doing fine on a long cut with the jig only to look back and see the drunken sailors walk. Then out comes my Roybi 3”x18” Belt Sander to throw that sailor in the brig.

Buying and using the Roybi 5-1/2” circular saw was a great tip from Scott Williams Element II Tiki 26 blog. Thanks Scott!

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